Exile on Main Street

[Huitzil]

Paul opens the cupboards and starts rummaging. He takes out the first box that feels to be about the size and shape of a ceral box, since his eyes are closed while he does this.

[Ginrai]

"Speaking of all that's been going on, anyone here have any strange dreams last night?

"Had one basically telling me that my life won't return to normal until whatever we're involved in, which they seemed to call a 'contest', is done.  Not that I actually expected to go home and return to a normal life at this point."

[Huitzil]

"That's fucking wierd... I was just thinking about the dream I had last night.

"I don't know if it means anything, though. I have dreams all the time, and usually they're just amagalms of every strange thing my subconscious can produce."

[Dracos]

"I never dream.  At least not for many many years.  So yeah, us all having visions is a bit weird.  But par for course."

Dracos

[Rezantis]

"Looks like it was in fact all of us, then."

[Huitzil]

Paul takes a box and a bowl, and sits down at the kitchen table with the rest of you. "I had heard somewhere that dreams either mean nothing, or they mean everything. And if they mean everything, you'll know. And I suppose... we know. So, I'll just tell you what I remember."

He opens the box and pours it into the bowl, still not looking up, eyes winced shut as if light was a hateful and evil thing to him.

"I was playing Lord of the Rings. I was winning, too. It was a big tournament, at Gen Con or something, and I was playing against some intolerable fatass running some deck he downloaded off the Internet and bought with money his mother gave him. I knew I had to win, because the prize would be my old life back. It was one of those things that you just know, in a dream, with the certainty that you know that gravity exists.

"It was my turn, and I was deciding whether or not to double-move. He had just killed one of my companions, and triggered a few threats, but I figured I had apretty good hand and it was important to get ahead, so I decided to press on."

He grabs the milk from wherever it is on the table, and pours it into the bowl. "The companion he had killed, by the way, was someone called 'Shade'. The guys I still had... were 'Ginrai', 'Nathan Shuker', 'Philip Bloom', 'Paul Durant', and 'Bjorn Christianson'. I saw nothing odd at the time of playing a card of myself. Also, I think Bjorn's subtitle was 'Master of Shin--' something, I can't remember, it's hazy even though it's clear. Anyway, they -- we, I guess -- were all wounded and limping along, but I figured I could hack it.

"So I double-move,and he plays some more minions, and then I realize I'm in trouble. He manages to stack two or three guys on Bjorn, and I realize that if Bjorn dies, I'm going to lose the game. I have a card in my hand that can save him if I add a bunch of burdens, but I don't know if doing that might give me enough burdens to corrupt my ring-bearer and make me lose anyway. I'm trying to think if I can save Bjorn without playing that card, when the guy starts talking in some language I don't know. He holds up this mirror, and when I start to look in it, I wake up. And somehow, I know, just as I know now that gravity makes things fall, that if I had looked in that mirror, I would not have seen myself in it.

"It has to mean something -- my dreams are never this coherent, and I never remember so much detail. But... what?"

He then dips his spoon into the bowl, takes a bite, and makes the worst, most puckered face you've ever seen. "I just poured myself a bowl of detergent, didn't I?"

[Rezantis]

"That sounds officially freaky.  Did we tell you Shade died in the workshop, by the way?"

[Huitzil]

"Uh, no...

"Who is Shade?"

[Rezantis]

"Shade.  Death.  Guy who hung around #void . . . er . . . wrote the Private Bet fanfics?""

[Huitzil]

"Not ringing a bell... and he died? How? I mean, I don't suppose it was a Dunlending Ransacker that killed him."

[Rezantis]

"Victor the Vampire, actually."

[Huitzil]

"Oh. That explains everything.

"Wait, no it doesn't."

[Rezantis]

"OK.  Basically, Shade, or Death, was another guy from #void.  He was also mixed up in this.  He got captured by the Seventh Cabal, and he came with us when we were busting out of the place.  We freed a particularly powerful guy named Victor, who appeared really scary and fast and strong.  Shade mouthed off at Victor, Victor got annoyed and demanded apology, Shade refused, Victor bit a large chunk out of Shade's neck and that was that."

[Huitzil]

"Jesus."

Paul really doesn't have anything else to say.

[Bjorn]

Bjorn wanders into the kitchen on the tail end of the conversation.  "Victor?" he asks Rez, scrounging around in the cupboards for a piece of bread with one hand, holding Shinmyouken with the other.